In Her Eyes
by stella8h8chang
Summary: Lily was the perennial best friend whose conviction never wavered, but Marlene was the girl whose temperament changed with the temperature. Watch a friendship etch itself upon the sky with diamonds. For the ‘Seasons Challenge’
1. Prologue

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_**Her Eyes: Prologue**_

_Picture yourself in a boat on a river,  
__With tangerine trees and marmalade skies__  
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly,  
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes._

_Cellophane flowers of yellow and green,  
__Towering over your head.__  
Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes,  
And she's gone._

_(__Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds__ – THE BEATLES)  
_

My eyes were never like Lily's. They weren't bright green and strikingly almond-shaped. My eyes were incapable of expressing an interesting shape – unlike Alice's large, round ones – and even more inept at being interestingly coloured – unlike James' hazel ones. Oh, I fancied they were special; I used to pretend to myself that they were "so dark brown they were almost black" and "unusually wide-open". But Lily's – they were the kind of eyes women in glossy magazines had, women whom I spent my childhood secretly admiring, despite telling everyone that I hated them.

It's lucky though, that with a little bit of time, resentment can be shed like dead leaves from a tree and jealousy can melt and vanish like pure white snow. It's lucky that the flowers of friendship can bloom even in the dark, and that love is as constant and certain as the sun's rising at the start of each day.

Each and every day.

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**_A/N:__ The authoress wishes to thank:_**_**  
Edward, **for everything your friendship brings. Happy birthday. I remember how you used this song in (aaarrgh, the traumatic memories!) your Imaginative Journeys essays. **JKR,** for creating a universe for me to play in which I do not own. **The Beatles** for their inspiring music which I am quoting. **The Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges Forum **for this awesome challenge!_


	2. Autumn

**_Her Eyes: Autumn_**

We met in September 1971, when fortune decided to make us roommates. Bad fortune in my case. Our family tree tapestry was blue, since virtually everyone had been in Ravenclaw, and the result of my Sorting would label me, Marlene Wagtail, the family dunce. On the first night, I was lying on my bed, bitterly contemplating my impending doom – being outshone by my one-year-old brother, Myron – and she approached and extended her hand.

"I'm Lily," she said. "Lily Evans."

Ugh. Gryffindor "courage". Mother had always warned me that they had some nerve…

"I know. I saw you at the Sorting," I replied, showing her that I was clearly not an idiot. "Right after Dawlish went to Ravenclaw." Lily Evans looked slightly blank. "You know, Dawlish. John Dawlish? Only son of the Deputy Head of the Auror Department?"

She shook her head, and it clicked in _my_ head.

"You're muggle-born, aren't you?" I asked in a singsong voice.

"I am," she said, neither intimidated nor incensed by my patronizing demeanour. "But I've done some magic already."

"Like…? I've always been one for Transfiguration," I said, thinking of the mahogany wand in my pocket.

She blinked, her eyelashes the colour of leaves at this time of year. "I prefer Charms," she said, pressing her lips together in a wistful smile, as if fondly recalling something. "But I think I'll like Potions best. Simmering cauldrons and shimmering fumes."

I raised my eyebrows. So she had a way with words too. But words were my domain! I was the poet of my family. Having won a children's Poetry Contest in _The Daily Prophet_ (the prize being 10 Galleons and a fine Raven Feather Quill) I now intended to become the resident melodramatic poet of Gryffindor Tower. I spoke slowly back. "Bewitching the mind and ensnaring the senses."

"Infusing the veins and creeping through rooms," she replied, deftly defending herself.

"So that all is seen through rose-coloured lenses." I wasn't going to lose _this_ fight too. My chest heaved and I bit my lip, ready to think of another retort the moment she opened her mouth.

"So why aren't you in the Common Room with everybody else?" she asked gently. It was only nine-thirty, and most of the first-years were busy forging useful connections downstairs.

"Because I don't belong here," I snapped, losing control. I dealt far better with sharpness and sarcasm and shortness than touchy-feely stuff. "I'm a Ravenclaw!"

"So we're in the same boat, you and I," she said.

"What?"

She sighed and sat herself gracefully onto her bed. "I always thought I should be in Slytherin. Ever since…"

I pinched myself for not having noticed it before. That competitive streak, the coolness of manner, the smooth arrogance…

"But wait," I said, interrupting her, "I thought you're muggle-born! I demand an explanation…er…I mean, we have to stick together, right? Beat the system? Prove to that scrap of fabric that his retirement is long overdue…"

That was the moment I realised she couldn't have been in Slytherin after all; not only was she a muggle-born, but she had a laugh that rang as clear and loud as the bell on the clock tower. Of course, it would take me years to realise that Gryffindor Tower was my own real home.

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**_A/N: _**Thankyou **lilyre **for being the first reviewer! I've never written about Lily, and I know this isn't how people usually imagine her, but I thought I'd experiment a bit. Please forgive me.


	3. Winter

_**A/N: Thank you so much to lyin', mustardgirl1128, Bad Mum, Kore-of-Myth, lilyre, Megsy42 and FollowMyLead for your lovely reviews! This chapter is quite long...but I hope I've been able to incorporate all the inspiration I've been blessed with!  
**_

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_**Her Eyes: Winter**_

Lily Evans and I were civil, though essentially cold, to each other for the next three years. Gryffindor Tower might have brought us physically close, but our conversations were always polite and diplomatic, as if we were always treading on thin ice.

Perhaps we would never have become as entangled in each other's fates had it not been for a certain Gryffindor boy, named James Potter.

On the whole, I didn't like boys, but James was a special case. We were possibly the most overprotected students that Hogwarts had seen since the turn of the century. In James' case, it was because his parents were elderly, having attended Hogwarts around the same time as my _grandparents_, while my parents were just pushy, pure-blooded puppeteers who wanted a second chance at youth. We were also rather temperamental, able to go from melancholy to anger, to contempt, and then to peaceful camaraderie in the space of five minutes. We'd also clocked up several detentions together, usually for not having done our homework – I'd given up on being a model student for my parents.

But most importantly, James and I had met during a gathering of our parentals at the age of six, at a time when the mind is as open to impressions as freshly-fallen snow is to footprints. It's incredibly hard to brush someone off when you've known them for more than half your life. Or when your parents have a photograph of the two of you puddle-jumping in red and blue Wellington boots framed on the piano.

The only downside to our friendship was that I had been dubbed "the fifth Gryffindor boy" by people who didn't know me very well, even though it was most certainly not true. I had no time for the three others who shared James' dorm – Remus Lupin, Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew. There were also those who thought we were an item waiting to happen, but although the thought crossed my mind, I knew he only ever had eyes for someone else.

I accidentally uncovered it one wintry afternoon, toasting marshmallows by the Common Room fire. For a few weeks, since Remus had gone home for the Christmas holidays, James had been keeping mostly to himself, leaving Sirius and Peter to maintain their reputation as world-class mischief-makers.

"I'm surprised you're still here at Hogwarts in the first week of January," I said, for it had been his first holiday spent at school. "How are you holding up, without your parents spoiling you every day?"

"I am doing quite well, thank you," he replied, taking a bite of white, vanilla marshmallow, and taking his time to chew and swallow it.

"Don't talk to me about a stifling home atmosphere," I sighed. "But even I wish I was home."

It had taken all of one week for the Christmas spirit to evaporate. Cooped up inside due to daily and brutal blizzards, Justin Mulciber, a fifth-year Slytherin, letting off some of his pre-OWL stress, decided to curse Mary McDonald, a first-year Gryffindor, reducing her to quacking and flapping about like a duck for a day. While the Slytherins maintained that it was no more than a practical joke, no more than something James and his mates would pull off, a lot of us were sure it was something darker.

"Oh, you know, with OWLs only a year away, it's time to get serious, isn't it? With studying n'all?" said James evasively.

"Wow," I said.

"You're so gullible, Marlene."

"I am not!" I knew better. Last year, the girls' hormones had kicked in, and my hours of sleep had been crippled by their incessant gossiping. This year I supposed it was the boys' turn.

James put his toasting-fork down, got up and walked to the window that overlooked the lake.

"What's the weather like out there?" I called. "Gryffindor-Slytherin snowball fight?"

"Almost," he said, as I joined him. We could see a male and a female figure standing on the middle of the lake, arguing vehemently.

"Lily Evans and Severus Snape?" I sniffed. "Hardly worth watching." At five foot seven, I was taller than both of them, and nowhere near as skinny.

"I don't like Snape," said James, wearing an expression I had never seen before. "He's in Mulciber's gang."

"He _what_?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Sure, Severus Snape was a gawky, greasy little Slytherin boy, but I'd never have picked him out as one of Justin Mulciber's mates.

"You heard me – they say he came into Hogwarts knowing more curses and hexes than all the seventh-years in Slytherin put together."

"What do you think he wants with Lily?"

James shrugged. "He seems to like hanging around brainy people he might be able to scam."

Still smarting from the "_You're so gullible_" comment, my mind began to concoct possible conspiracies. Before I knew it, the blood was thumping in my ears, and I was panicking. "She told me she was muggle-born, James. And Mary's parents are definitely muggles too; they're English teachers!"

If I had been a year older, perhaps I would also have had a shade of self-control. But at fifteen, I was all but entirely ruled by my impulses. I pointed my wand near where Snape's feet were planted.

"What are you doing?" shouted James, grabbing my arm.

"Getting Snape into a Watery Scrape?"

"And drenching Lily as well?"

"I wouldn't…"

"What, with your 'accuracy' when it comes to spells?"

Then it clicked for me.

"Hey, you don't need to get vicious just because you're sweet on her!" I exploded. "I mean…her birthday's coming up; you could use it as an excuse to buy her a new coat if we ruined her old one?"

Whatever souls were made out of, James' and Lily's were opposites of each other, like fire and ice, and I knew then that if he chose to chase her, he'd be in for a lot of knocks. But he always persevered – and that was what inspired me to learn the art of patience when it came to Matthew McKinnon. That, and James opened up my eyes to everything that made her wonderful.

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	4. Spring

_**A/N: Thank you so much to Kore-of-Myth, lyin', lilyre, mustardgirl1128 and Dangling.Radishes for their feedback on the last chapter!  
**_

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_**Her Eyes: Spring**_

It was an occupational hazard of being a seventeen-year-old girl who lived in jeans and could shout louder than the entire sixth-year boys' dorm put together that you weren't knocked back lightly, given that you'd spent most of your life knocking other people for their conservative lifestyles. This would all have been quite all right, until Matthew McKinnon came along, and my priorities in life had changed overnight.

Well, perhaps I was exaggerating, since he'd always been _there_ in the Gryffindor common room. But there had been this one day when he'd been up in arms about a lost essay, and I'd been the one who'd found it in the wastepaper basket.

_"Thank you. Thank you. I could kiss you." _

And from that moment, I'd started wondering what would have happened if he had kissed me, and whether there was now any chance of it happening in the future. Now, with two months between us and our exams, I was convinced that flapping about, rustling loudly through piles of parchment and throwing books was the best way to get seventh-year Matthew's attention.

"You're only in sixth-year!" shouted the boy. "What have you got to worry about?"

Plan B was to ask my good friend James for "approval".

"What do you think of Matthew?" I asked, expecting that he would do for me as I had done for him.

"He's…weird," James said. Lowering his voice, he then asked, "Why, are you and him an item?"

"…no, not exactly…"

James' face lit up with glee – I unfortunately had overestimated his maturity, as he galloped over to his mate, Sirius, and whispered in his ear. This was the start of a grotesque Gryffindor grapevine that grew from Sirius Black to Beryl Hughes, to Stacey Streatfield, to Dervla O'Sullivan, to Benjy Fenwick and then to Matthew himself. The result was that Matthew told Benjy, who told Dervla, who told Stacey, who told Beryl, who told Sirius, who told James to tell me that he wasn't the least bit interested.

And so it came about that I was fuming in the common-room very late one night on the verge of tears, and scribbling in my diary with so much force that I kept punching holes in the paper. At the sound of footsteps on the stone stairs, I slammed the precious book shut.

"You're up late."

I lifted my head and glared straight into the green eyes of Lily Evans, who sat down next to me. "It's not about exams, is it? I heard," she said gently. "You should've spoken to Remus instead – he doesn't gossip."

I sprang out of my seat, thinking of James, and how he would feel if she and Remus were an item. "Don't tell me…you…two…"

She chuckled quietly. "Why does everyone think that? I can't understand it – just because we're both quiet intellectuals – if anything I thought you two would be more suited to each other. You both admire the ability to use metaphor to speak evasively."

I began thinking of how "bad boy" James had fallen for "good girl" Lily, and how my situation was the exact opposite. Then, because tears always show up uninvited, I felt my eyes mist up and my nose start to run. Seizing my stationery, I turned my back and was about to head for the dorms when I heard her voice.

"My mother always tells me – never let a boy make you cry."

"I am not crying!" I exploded.

Now she said nothing.

Instead, she came over and rubbed my back.

"It's easy for you to say," I blubbered through saline, snot and saliva. "You've always had plenty of not-so-secret admirers."

"Stalkers, more like," she muttered. By this stage, the whole school knew about James. "Wouldn't wish one of those upon anyone."

"But you're smart, and funny, and – and – you have perfect skin…" Unlike clumsy, plain, pimply Marlene.

"My _skin_?" her tone changed completely. "You think _my skin_ is perfect? With my five million freckles?"

I was fleetingly reminded of the light spatter of freckles across Matthew's nose.

"You know what they say – _a face without freckles is a sky without stars_."

She looked stunned for a moment, then remembered who she was speaking to. "You want me to speak in _your language_?" she said, a smile returning to her face. "Well then, see those flowers in the vase on the mantelpiece?"

I shuffled closer to the bouquet that one of the fifth-years had conjured up as exam practice.

"Look – one's still a bud! But I think," she said, pulling it out of the vase and handing it to me, "That when it blooms, it will be the loveliest of them all." For a moment, our hands connected, and I started to wonder if all the random acts of kindness in the world were part of something greater, some kind of ancient magic. Or maybe it was just friendship.

I was the one who broke the spell, and the silence. "I'm so over boys, aren't you? Let's be feminists together…"

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	5. Summer

_**A/N: Thank you to Dangling.Radishes, lyin', FollowMyLead, lilyre, Kore-of-Myth and mustardgirl1128 for reviewing my "spring" chapter! After this there will be just one more - an epilogue, because I can't resist.  
**_

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_**Her Eyes: Summer**_

In the midst of the deception and distrust of the late 1970s, Lily and I somehow managed to become as thick as thieves. Revising for our NEWTs by the lake (she helped me with Potions, I helped her with Transfiguration), cheering on James on the Quidditch pitch (they'd been made Head Girl and Head Boy, which made it only natural that they started dating), laughing at the girls in Madam Puddifoot's as we ran past on our way to the Three Broomsticks…

But the day came when we no longer had the hallowed halls of Hogwarts to protect us. Suddenly, there was no one to protect us; _we _were the ones who would have to do the protecting. James, Sirius, Remus, Peter, Lily and I joined the Order of the Phoenix in an attempt to add meaning to our lives.

You see, apart from the Order missions, I hardly went outdoors – I spent my days in a _Daily Prophet_ office and my free nights alone in my apartment, trying to avoid the shroud of terror that had settled upon the world. And trying to avoid spending time with my brother Myron, a ten-year-old piano prodigy who was playing Mozart sonatas and Merlin knew what else. It was so unjust that I was tone-deaf, and he was pitch-perfect.

It was seeing Lily once or twice a week that kept my faith in humanity alive.

_Cheer up, Marlene…I'm sure journalists earn more money than musicians…_

And then Lily and James got married. And before long, Lily was pregnant with a baby boy. Well, in my head there was some dispute about the order of these two events, but what I cared much more about was losing Lily's companionship, as her involvement in the Order waned.

Imagine my exhilaration when, out of the blue, one Sunday morning, an almost-solid silver doe showed up on my doorstep

"_He's here! St Pristina's!_" it announced, in Lily's dear voice.

St Pristina's was a magical maternity hospital. I snatched up my bag, strode out into the comforting summer sun and Disapparated.

I was the only one on the ward – presumably, "The Marauders" had already visited. The baby was so warm, pink and cuddly that it melted away several months of stress in a matter of moments. "What'll you call him?"

"Harry," said Lily.

"Harry_ James_," said James. "After his grandfather and father, of course!"

"You mean, after his grandfather and father's _egos_?"

Lily rolled her eyes and rocked the bundle in her arms. "So can you give your godmother a smile, Harry?" she cooed.

If I had been sensitive to heat, this would've been enough to push me over the brink and I would have fainted.

"_Godmother?_"

"Will you be his godmother?" asked James. "We're asking Sirius to be his godfather."

I could hardly believe my ears. "Has Sirius agreed?"

"I'm sure he will, when we ask him."

"He hasn't been here yet? So how did you get to…" Apparition and floo-powder were not considered safe means of travel for a woman in labour, and since James was a typical pure-blooded male who could not drive, I had assumed that Sirius would've lent his giant motorbike to the cause. Until this moment, when, cursing my lack of commonsense, I realised that motorbikes and brooms were hardly safer. "…Oh, Remus got you here? I thought it was…"

"No, Matthew drove us."

"Matthew who?"

"Matthew McKinnon, of course!" said James. "You know, it was lucky that Lily and I bumped into Matthew when we were out at…"

This was where I ceased listening. I saw Matthew every day at the _Prophet_ offices, and since graduation, we had maintained a firm, but purely professional relationship.

"PRONGS!" shouted a voice. All of a sudden, three men pushed past me to whack James on the back. "I trust it all went well?" They chorused. "C-congratulations!" said a wheezy voice. "He has _hair!_ Black hair! I suppose there's no doubt he can be yours, then, James, eh? Be a bit suss if his hair was yellow, or something…"

I caught Lily's smile out of the corner of my eye. She beckoned to me. "Matthew waited here for ages – I think he wanted to talk to you."

"What?"

"I know – it's none of my business – but you should know that every time he thought he heard a pair of sneakers squeaking down the corridor, he stopped breathing."

"What?" I repeated.

"Why don't you ask him out for dinner or something?"

"Oh god, Lily, I'm getting butterflies in my stomach just _thinking_ about it."

"Just…be mature about it! I_ know_ you've been avoiding him for the past three years, but think about it, it's been _three years_!" she looked at James, who was beaming at her.

I don't know what came over me that moment - I put it down to the excess of ecstasy in the room, but I _winked_. "Hey, _if nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies…_"


	6. Epilogue

_**Her Eyes: Epilogue**_

Last week the news reached us that Marlene and her whole family – Matthew, Emily and Patrick – had all been killed. At first, I wouldn't – couldn't – believe it. Marlene was the only one involved in the Order, and the twins couldn't even talk yet, being much younger than Harry. Why? Why such needless deaths of innocents? And then I remembered what we were fighting against – those who wouldn't kill in self-defence or some other conceivable circumstance, but for the sake of bloodshed itself.

If I had to sum her up in one metaphor, I imagine Marlene being like a kaleidoscope. She wasn't fragile – it must have taken a dozen Death Eaters to break her – but with the _gentlest_ touch, she would _change_. And the more time you spent with her, the more you realized how beautiful every single facet of her was.

_Picture yourself on a train in a station,_

_With plasticine porters with looking glass ties,_

_Suddenly someone is there at the turnstile,_

_The girl with kaleidoscope eyes._

Fin.

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**_A/N: Happy Olympics, everyone!_**_** A huge thanks to GiddyGirlie, SaintRidley, Kore-of-Myth, Dangling.Radishes, mustardgirl1128, FollowMyLead who commented on the last chapter, as well as Megsy42 and the Challenges forum for coming up with the prompts! **_

_**I hope you have all had as much fun reading my little story as I did writing it! Hope to see you soon on one of my other stories! If you liked this, you may also like the short and sweet "Knitwit", the Ron/Hermione one-piece "I knew I loved you" or if you want something much more epic (and much darker), "Time Loves to Fly" about Hogwarts 100 years ago!**_


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